Book opens w/ driver in Normal, Illinois and partner and daughter and step-daughter in Providence, Rhode Island.

- Discussion of katabasis (8-14); setting of katabatic theme of notebook: narrative arc of notebook as in one sense a journey into and out of a hell, the rising out of a self-made, or a self-permitted, hell as the notebook progresses- Meeting Herodotus in hell (8-13)- Essay on Whitman’s comprehensive empathy and its relation to death and the comic (8-11)- 22-36: lengthy beating and torture of American bald eagle that eventually morphs into J Robert Oppenheimer

63-64 Essay on literary narcissism (in Aufgabe)

71- A marriage occurs in attempt to save a relationship. 71-72 theory about cockroaches proffered

87-91 Catalog of road signs from Ohio to Illinois.

96-108: Essay on dung

75-77: Violent parody of “The Battle Hymn of the Republic”

136-146, 161, 217: Violent attack on Nancy Reagan

110-118, 167-171, 172-180: Violent attack on Bush family

180: A divorce is decided on 4 months later (3.16.03), the very day the US invades Iraq.

194-212: Driver meets M...., a kind person; driver not used to such a kind, calm person

213–230: Driver travels to Providence to give poetry reading, negative mindstates generated by exposure to long-standing interpersonal trauma and then deflected toward southerners, also extension of a violent verbal world constructed around Nancy Reagan, in which I think she turns into an eagle again; also talk of killing a deer with a thumbtack (p. 225); further various unfocused negativities, etc

231– 253: Optative mood. Drive to collect Clio and bring her to IL for summer. 238-241: Hymn of gratitude for Clio (not in galley version)

239 – 264: Driver determines to embrace a strict wash of meditative practice as a means of coming out of habitual modes of perception and action. On the logically-grounded and scientific efficacy of certain aspects of Buddhistic psychology – and the resolution to begin developing lovingkindness – and how to do that

at the beginnings of what would come to be “our time,” must have something in it that is barbaric, vast, & wild.It is some such wildness & vastness (multiplied several times over) that marks Gabriel Gudding’s unexpurgated & ever-more-inclusive Notebook.In writing or recording it, he creates an ultimate on-the-road poem, ranging between the personal & political, the familial (familiar) & the transcendent (transformal), while never stopping to apologize or to correct.Seen in that light & its attendant darkness, Rhode Island Notebook is a modern/postmodern epic as a poem-including-everything.An incredibly human/humane book at bottom, it is also Gudding’s road of excess, as Blake once had it, leading him (& us) to the palace of wisdom.

-- Jerome Rothenberg

This is a remarkably vulnerable book, a dapple-drawn vortex sutra, a contemporary odyssey, an anti-Baudrillardic-bardic remapping of America. It is a meditation on loss and fecundity, an amazing read, a necessary read, by an amazing poet. It documents travel-stubble and it brings America home like nothing else I've read. Literally written on the road, everything skitters and opens to an elsewhere. What might have been an experiment in conceptual writing has emerged into an exhilaration that makes me glad I'm still alive, in the midst of critique and highways. This is the first 21st-century classic.

6 comments:

"An anti-pastoral response to Ashbery's quietistic _Vermont Notebook_?" I am interested in your Notebook - especially with Alan Sondheim's comment - his own work is incredible - Vermont Notebook - for me -is one of Ashbery's best books!!

Your "anti-pastoral" response is of course satirical but I thought I would record my comment - Vermont Notebook seems to me to be bypassed too much. It has a lot of the spirit of Schuyler in it ... a great poet also, in my book. I love his: "A Picnic Sonata" and "The Morning of the Poem"..

Is your book or project in a physical actuality or in any discreet form - that is can it be seen (or bought?)?

I like Schuyler and Ashbery - at one stage (here in NZ - for a number of years in the 90s he was my "secret"!) - I started or restarted writing about 1988 - then I found a book (by chance by Ashbery called "Houseboat Days") a friend and I read it out together and laughed over it - I had not read anything like it - but then I hadn't read much poetry (or anything except for an Engineering course I did part time) for 20 years...then I got the bug (also my friend found Cortazar's book of stories...Famas and Cronopias -again we had good laugh!!) But I loved it. (Later I found out about Blackburn (another diary keeper) who translated it...

Yes Schuyler is very intense, and often also full of light - perhaps not enough attention paid to him perhaps cf Ashbery et al. (But Ashbery is a great poet also.) - just as in NZ here Baxter is a great poet but perhaps not enough attention is paid to Kendrick Smithyman.

BTW you shouldn't ever get bored!!Alan has been known to say that everything interests him!!!

In a fit of madness!!! - - as I ---shouldn't--- be using my ccs - they groan with credit groans - I bought your book from Dalkey - all the way from the US - sight unseen!

This all comes from the fact I had your Blog as link on mine (Eyelight) and a friend told (reminded me) me about it - and he was enthusing about your notebook - I read Alan's and other comments and the content - I also have daugters as and am divorced and so on and I like the idea of diaries and journies...

Interesting Alan was the main inspiration - I found him the most interesting - or one of the - on the Poetics List and I have since written about him and so on - I also found that my "The Infinite Poem" idea/project/conceptual poem which I began in 1992 had been transformed to Alan's huge Internet Philosophy work...[or so it seemed] (of course the ideas of myself and Alan are probably very different but there are eerie similarities (and I have been inspired and influenced by Alan - as well as hearing about all the other long poems and so on... - probably not to imitate exactly - but certainly the multimedia approach was reinforced and so on...except I am not as well versed in postmodern philosophy etc - or theories of the Internet etc etc.

I'd sign said book, Richard. But HOW? You live in New Zealand -- and I tho I wish I lived in New Zealand, I don't. So, yes wd love to sign, but how to sign? Here's what: if you have Dalkey send it to me, I'll sign it and send it to you. How's that sound?

I gotta get my links back up on my blog! I "upgraded" to blogger2 and they took away all my links. I'm going to put them back one of these days -- and add yours. I love reading your blog.

"Rhode Island Notebook is a modern/postmodern epic as a poem-including-everything. An incredibly human/humane book at bottom, it is also Gudding’s road of excess, as Blake once had it, leading him (& us) to the palace of wisdom."